No offense meant, Mnem, but I personally find that you should not use "mod-only" tools in non-mod related matters.
Your posts are often very random and distracting anyway, and I would find it polite if you at least would not use "mod-only" tags in your posts to highlight your randomness.
That just hits me on the wrong button. (I refer specifically back to this post by you. The [glow] and

"Notice:"tags are not available to others, and specifically the use of the

"Notice:"annoyed me, as things in the infobox are meant as very visible information to reminnd forumites of the rules in this forum...)

Otherwise please go on. The randomness is sometimes refreshing.

And I also like the closeness of mods to the community.
The best forums I've participated in, the mods were the most active users of the forum themselves.

Why precisely is [glow]glow[/glow] not available to non-mods? It seems like it'd be a great tool for people running games and such.

You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.

Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.

Krulle wrote:No offense meant, Mnem, but I personally find that you should not use "mod-only" tools in non-mod related matters.
Your posts are often very random and distracting anyway, and I would find it polite if you at least would not use "mod-only" tags in your posts to highlight your randomness.
That just hits me on the wrong button. (I refer specifically back to this post by you. The [glow] and

"Notice:"tags are not available to others, and specifically the use of the

"Notice:"annoyed me, as things in the infobox are meant as very visible information to reminnd forumites of the rules in this forum...)

Otherwise please go on. The randomness is sometimes refreshing.

And I also like the closeness of mods to the community.
The best forums I've participated in, the mods were the most active users of the forum themselves.

You are entitled to this opinion. I disagree with it.

I feel it is pretty evident that when I do "misuse" such tools, it is very infrequently, and always with humorous intent. I don't ABUSE them; and I think there is definitely room here for both attitudes. As I've said before, that's one of the things I love about this forum.

Also -

Really? Glow is a special attribute? I don't remember it being that way on the old forum... nor on at least a dozen other forums I've frequented. Good lord, I've had similar special fonts available since the old UseNet days... I'll keep that in mind in the future.

Helps a lot to make the text a character with a rather bright color says visible, which else would be near invisible against the backcolor of the forum.
Like a yellow char for example "Hey, people can finally read what I say!"

Could we set up something that forced people to post their first post in the newcomers thread, thus avoiding them posting in random games and bringing them back to life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that this is known about by you Mods...but...I thought newcomers were limited to where their first post had to be, but maybe forcing a persons first post to only be in 1 thread, you could limit them from dredging the swamp with an old thread and bringing it back to the surface.

You can see all the personal website links..majority of which are porn.

So, in short my 1 suggestion becomes a few suggestions.

1. Limit a newcomers initial post to "the newcomers Check-in!", potentially by "prompting" them in a welcome message to go "check-in" at said location. This would limit all spam to only 1 location, instead of anywhere they want.
2. Disallow newcomers to post "personal website" until after they've posted at least 5 times. This would eliminate porn websites and other such spam or virus sites from being in a profile as most spambots wouldn't take that much time to make spam..cause spam is all about the "quick release" if you will.
3. Develop a list of websites that spambots are using as their "personal websites" ex: latin.porndairy.in and either auto-ban, auto-delete, or auto-deny anyone attempting to set website as their own. (Though I would think that Suggestion 2 would eliminate suggestion 3 from needing to happen.)
4. Create an additional party that's right beneath the newcomers adventurers party called something like "cannon-fodder" which "with warning" creates a temporary group that is purged after a set time period (say 1 week). Then, set entry into the newcomers party at say, 5 posts. (I realize that there are several lurkers on this forum, but I'm sure that they could be grandfathered into this system, as well as potentially being willing to post a few times in order to be allowed to stay.)

Thanks, Badge. I'm not sure how much of that is possible, but we'll talk it over. Good catch on the personal website links.

As for posting an introduction in one of those two threads: it is a rule that you're supposed to do that, but the boards software doesn't force it.

Meantime, we're doing our best to care of active spam posts as they come up. There has been a recent uptick, which has been a little annoying, but it's not like it's an overwhelming flood. Still, some new restrictions may be warranted. We just have to see what's possible with the software we have that won't put too many barriers in the way of lurkers and genuine newcomers who might want to contribute.

Thanks for the suggestions Badge. I've thought of trying many of the same things before, but unfortunately I have not been able to find any way to implement them. As much as I would like to consider myself the omnipotent god of the forum, my power is limited by the forum's architecture, if phpbb doesn't allow it I can't do it. Keep the ideas coming though!

Sorry for the necro, but I think it can be done by database manipulation. Maybe you could put that into a script that runs every now and then, so newcomers websites would be deleted several times a day, until they get into another group. A more brutal way would be to fully remove the personal websites, but I think that is not wanted.